


Haircut

by Keamperia_Anderson



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keamperia_Anderson/pseuds/Keamperia_Anderson
Summary: A story of "haircut friendship" between Antonio and Matthias.
Relationships: Denmark/Spain (Hetalia)
Kudos: 2





	Haircut

When Antonio woke up in the sunshine, he could still smell the flowers on the lawn. He finished his nap and walked down the hill, ready to go play with the other boys, but felt people pointing at him along the way. The object was ...... _his hair_?

As he passed the pond, he tried to use the surface of the water as a mirror, but he could no longer calm down with this look and even almost fell in.

**Several strands of hair on top of his head had been cut off!**

Three seconds later, the list with the name of the only murderer had been formed, and Antonio got up and ran towards the bungalow to the right of the fork in the road, shouting as he did so, "Come out Matthias! I won't let you go-"

The door was half hidden and through the crack another boy could be seen running towards the backyard. Antonio locked on to his target and quickly gave chase.

They ran far and wide, across the fields, through the apple orchards, through the largest farm in the town. Until finally, the culprit in front of him, named Matthias, was defeated in a dead-end street.

Antonio took a step closer with a victorious smile, ignoring his opponent's query "What do you want?". With one hand, he pinned Matthias to the wall and with the other, he took the scissors and without hesitation, he cut the blonde hair. Repeating the scissor open and closed for numerous times, he did not stop until Matthias' hair was as miserable as his current one.

Matthias saw his dented chunk of hair through the window glass and turned to ask, "Are we done now?"

"Of course! It's called an eye for an eye." Antonio replied proudly, remembering the idiom he had once learnt.

Three days before school starts, and they would be meeting their classmates together with haircuts that were uglier than a dog's chew. But still, two were better than one.

They were only seven years old then, and they believed in the principle that pain could be halved if it was shared. They always believed that.

Matthias gave them a new term for their relationship, the "Haircut friendship".

* * *

Since then, every summer they would still come to the town. One year, two years, three years. Until once, after waiting with great joy, Antonio still didn't see Matthias.

"Mum, you haven't told me yet," Antonio brought it up again at dinner time, "when exactly is Matthias coming?"

"He's ......," Mum's eyes fell on Antonio, while the knife and fork in her hands continued to move, several times only hitting the air. "He probably won't be able to make it, like, for physical reasons or something? His mother didn't tell me in detail."

And without waiting for her to finish, Antonio was determined to leave the town as soon as possible. Without Matthias, he didn't want to stay a second longer.

That night he heard the two mothers on the phone again, and the limited time he eavesdrop only allowed him to memorize three sentences, included 22 words he had already learnt, and one that was still new to him.

Antonio wrote down its pronunciation, listing all the possible syllables, then going through the dictionary one by one. When he heard his mother's footsteps, he quickly closed that thick book. Could this be called feel guilty as a thief? He can't give the answer.

The next morning they drove back to town.

After leaving all luggage at home, Antonio couldn't wait urging his mother to take him to see Matthias.He knew they should go north, Matthias' house was right on that way. But his mother went in the opposite direction.

What she eventually led Antonio to was a hospital.

Matthias was in the ward at the end of the corridor. As soon as he saw Antonio, he forgot the no-loud-noises rule and greeted his friend with a loud "Tony, you're finally here! I've been nearly bored to death in here."

"Me too! There's no fun being alone in the town."

Then Antonio asked the question he cares most about, "So, when can you get out of hospital?"

"I don't know hey, but it should ...... be soon? Mum said it's not a serious illness."

"I'll wait for you then, and don't forget our appointment of getting on the Ferris wheel together this summer!"

"Of course I won't forget." Matthias smiled at him.

* * *

So Antonio waited and waited, three days, a week, two weeks, and there was still no sign of his friend being discharged.

When he stepped into the white room again, the first thing he noticed was Matthias' hair.

"Who cut your hair?!" He blurted out.

If at past Matthias' hair style could be compared to four peaks, what Antonio had cut off that summer were the two of them. And now there were only a few dirt-baggy mounds left, sprawled limply there. His hair has thinned beyond recognition.

"They ...... fell on their own." Matthias turned his head and, quite rarely, he did not speak with his usual loud voice tinged with laughter.

Antonio suddenly remembered the word he had drawn in his dictionary, it's so long, at least for his age.

_Leucocitemia_ ...... leukaemia.

He had never associated the word with his friend.Did Matthias know? Did they ever tell him?

"It's okay, when you get out of the hospital I'll get a haircut just like it!" Any words would have been too pale, but when Antonio said that, it really seemed to do something.

"It's a deal, I'll hold you to it!" For the first time in the day, Matthias smiled again.

The two boys must have been thinking again of the "Haircut friendship" they had once had. They were seven years old then, and now they were twelve. They still believe that pain can be shared and hope can be shared too - especially when that person is your best friend.

Antonio suddenly came up with a million more thoughts that he needed to put into words, but his vocabulary didn't allow it. How could it be enough when he had learned so little at school? He must learn more sooner rather than later, and Matthias must wait for him until then. They still had the "Haircut friendship" to fulfill, and they even hadn't ride the Ferris wheel yet.

You must wait for me, you must. Antonio thought to himself as he walked out of the ward.

But did he wait in the end?

In the end ......

* * *

When the eighteen-year-old Antonio looked at himself in the mirror, he subconsciously touched the back of his ear.

There had been a scar that snaked a few centimetres.

The twelve-year-old Antonio stood dumbly in front of the dressing mirror, holding an electric razor he had retrieved from the bathroom. His beautiful brown curls, each curved in just the right way, were gilded by the warm sun.

For a moment, the sound of footsteps seemed to echoed in his ears again. There were nurses and doctors, as he watched so many people poured together into the ward at the end of the corridor. He seemed to want to go in too to see what was going on, but someone stopped him and the scene gradually spun in reverse of silence amidst childish shouting.

Some time passes before he sees a woman sitting on a bench close to the wall, whimpering. One could tell she was trying desperately to suppress her grief. Antonio's mother was sitting next to her, hanging her head and resting her hand on the woman's shoulder.

Antonio ran back home. Maybe he should have stayed, he just didn't want to, couldn't, didn't know how to deal with it. He was afraid to stand in front of Matthias' mother, who had lost her son, and he had lost his best friend. What else could they say?

Antonio pressed the button on the razor and the blades spinned up and buzzed. He slowly moved it to the ends of his hair. The curly brown hair - once admired and praised by countless people - fell to the ground in strands that floated through the air. He didn't even want to consider the reason for doing so, or maybe he just wanted to ask his friend,

"Hey, why don't you wait for me to keep my promise?"

Over the sound of the running razor, he didn't hear his mother open the door. The next thing he knew was that she was rushing over and trying to grab the razor. Midway through, the still spinning blade of razor inadvertently touched his skin, gouging it so hard that blood spurted out quickly.

The first thing his mother did when she reacted was to go for the first aid kit, while scolding him for being stupid.

It was indeed silly. In the midst of the blood, Antonio realized that his days of being silly like that were over. The weather would be drier, and September was already over.

* * *

The cut made by the razor would slowly heal, scabbing and the scab falling off, leaving this unsubtle scar at last. When the scar had faded to a barely noticeable color, Antonio was on age of his Bar Mitzvah.

That June, he went on the Ferris wheel by himself.

At a certain moment when he reached the highest point, he seemed to glimpse a parallel world across the sky. There he saw two boys of about eleven, wearing duck-tongue hats, entering the classroom, with bad haircuts underneath as if they had been chewed by the same dog. And then the scene changed to two grown-up teenagers, talking to their classmates. The curly brown hair and blonde spikes hair were as conspicuous as the smiles on their faces.

For a moment he was sure that this was indeed happening in a certain parallel world.

Antonio watched the scene in silence, until a cold liquid ran down his cheek.


End file.
